


The Sacred and the Profane

by prairiecrow



Series: One Degree of Separation [5]
Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Love, Lust, M/M, Robot Sex, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:49:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it were only lust, Hobby could accept it on those terms. But there is potentially so much more…</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sacred and the Profane

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Set about six months after "One Degree of Separation".  
> 2) Written for the "Seven Deadly Sins" contest over on #Fiction-Freaks at deviantART.

They are alone now at the end of a long and exhausting day, and Allen Hobby has just shrugged out of his jacket with the intention of sitting down and going over some thesis proposals — but when Joe comes to him, lovely and lithe and smiling winningly, Hobby embraces him at once with an eagerness that is never, if he was honest with himself, very far from the surface. The robot's stylish clothing opens easily, inviting him to explore and to claim what has been his for almost six months now, consistent yet ever-new, and the skin beneath his hungry hands is as smooth as silk, but it is not truly skin, not at all: rather it is a flawless manufactured substance that only nods in the direction of humanity, its subtle gleam suggesting the artificial perfection of a doll rather than the hide of anything that lives and breathes and aches as its master lives, and breathes, and aches with the weight of expectation and memory that most mecha could never begin to comprehend. 

Joe, he suspects, is capable of surprising him in this regard as well, if only he could determine the right questions to ask to unlock the secrets that the robot is constitutionally incapable of accessing for himself. They are there, oh yes, that much Hobby has never doubted — but at the moment their mouths are too busy for words and he has other, more carnal goals in mind than probing the unknown contours of this strange machine's rudimentary consciousness. 

He is too busy tracing other contours, more concrete but no less enthralling and no less perfect. His fingers seek them out, tracing every curve and hollow as he pushes Joe back against the filing cabinet in his home office and gives himself to the beauty that lures him ever closer. He knows every millimetre of this simulator's body — it has, after all, perfect copies all over the world, and its technical specifications are widely available — but he is convinced that if he were to walk blindfolded into a room full of LX9s he would unerringly find Joe within seconds. The unique inflection that velvet murmuring voice places on his name — "Allen," breathed against his neck between soft ardent kisses — is unmistakeable, and only Joe would come to him at once, unblinking eyes alight with eager recognition and hands outstretched to meet him.

Those slender hands… his flesh is on fire wherever they slide inside his clothing to caress and clasp him, and the fact that their endoskeleton is composed of steel rather than bone does nothing to diminish the heat: in fact it only adds to the burn, because Hobby has discovered a potential for arousal lurking within that alien touch that was unsuspected until this mecha's existence intersected his. It sometimes embarrasses him, the way Joe can make him blaze with shameless sexual incandescence: it is a blessing he'd never expected to find again at his age, a pure and potent delight that makes every embrace feel transcendently real. He loses himself in it again and again, always fearing that this time he will grow cold, that he will come to the inevitable common-sensical conclusion that he is dealing with a sensuality simulation, nothing more.

Never, not even for a second, has Joe disappointed him.

But beneath the kisses and embraces, beneath the seething lustful heat to be expected under the ministrations of a lover-robot, a certain perturbation remains. If it were only lust — and it is lust indeed, for Joe's presence fills him with a slow subliminal sensual burn even in the most innocent moments, just waiting to burst into this joyous all-consuming flame — he could accept it on those terms, and as a reasonable reaction to the exquisitely programmed behaviour of a creature designed to inspire and fulfill human desire. But even in moments like this, when his flesh is being gloriously awakened by the mecha's skills, he must admit that it is so much more than that: not only his body is engaged, but also his spirit, advancing and yearning, seeking and meeting. He looks into Joe's eyes to see a delight there that, while inhuman, answers his own; he kisses and caresses in the hope that the signals will communicate his appreciation and his pleasure… and something else, something heretical, a factor that transforms the base physical act of using a sex-mecha into something that borders on the spiritual. 

When he moves in Joe the darkness that conceals them becomes a holy time and place, a temple untouched by the rest of the wide and weary world, theirs -- and theirs alone.

And at the moment of climax, safely enfolded in arms that could break him like a reed, Allen Hobby closes his eyes and surrenders himself to the truth that he cannot put into words. Not yet. But in his heart, his mortal beating heart so unlike the relentless nuclear fire that fuels the machine, he knows that the day will come when he will speak it aloud, at some future point when Joe will have learned from experience that his words and deeds can be trusted… and that Joe, who has a deeply ingrained conviction that a mecha can never be more than a disposable element in the life of any organic being, will surely not believe him. Not at first, anyway.

 _You were already loved,_ Hobby will tell him with a smile that will be sad and proud in equal measure. He will take Joe's face in his hands and kiss those rose petal lips, letting the blade of sexuality cleave its pre-programmed path into the mecha's awareness and open that clockwork mind to a deeper truth: _For so very long. I was only waiting for the right moment to teach you the difference between the sacred and the profane._

THE END


End file.
